Friday, 20 July 2012

Scrapdragons

I made a lot of wire legs for the little birds we started making at our summer retreat (aka play session) at Blue Ginger. I made them with the spare wire curled up at the top - useful if you want to make a beak or tail or just to add stability to the stuffed bird. After a day spent trying to learn how to make a badge like Kathleen's my fingers wanted to do what they wanted to do....so a small creature evolved on the legs. I like to build these little beasts from the inside out and let the materials decide what they want to become.

badge for Joy, my heroic little sister

I unfurled the little loops at the top and stitched wings on. I used small scraps of an odd slightly translucent crepe fabric which arrives in my scrapbox backed onto heavy satin - part of my treasures supplied by Sue Elliot. These little scraps had lovely swoopy edges so I used a piece for each wing and didn't cut them to shape at all. It means the wings are very different in shape but the same texture.

I stitched a little wadding to the body and then tugged a piece of vari-coloured velvet in place. Eyes were added - brown buttons I got from a treasure trove of materials donated by a fellow embroider to the group when we were at Blue Ginger.

The legs are made from a wire that is moderately easy to work with but it is too springy and won't move into new shapes as easily as I would like. Getting all the toes to hit the ground is very hard, so I think a different kind of wire will need to be found once this lot is used up.